Marylynn Uricchio

Marylynn spent 17 years as the film critic for the Pittsburgh Post-​Gazette before becoming the newspaper’s society editor and SEEN columnist. She is currently working on a collection of short stories.

A life well traveled, well collected, well lived. The evidence fills the spectacular city residence of a prominent couple who recently moved into an historic building. Their apartment occupies most of an upper floor, with views on three sides that provide a breathtaking panorama.

The house sits majestically on the crest of a hill, with sweeping vistas of other hills and the wooded valleys that connect them. There is little evidence of civilization even beyond the 33-​acre site, which makes the home seem private and remote.

Unlike most of the homes designed by architect Brandon Smith, the stucco, brick and limestone residence in Squirrel Hill isn’t large or imposing. It was built in 1948 for a retired couple who were downsizing, but who wanted an elegant and formal town house.

From the outside, the Tudor home looks as if it’s always been comfortably nestled on the leafy street in Sewickley. That was important to architect Douglas Devlin, whose challenge was to fit a new residence into an established neighborhood without disturbing the aesthetic.

Dean Martin slept here. OK, not really, but he was very much the inspiration for the approach interior designer Neill Stouffer took with a historic Sewickley Heights residence. Formerly two carriage houses joined by a nine-​car garage, the home has a charming English country exterior.

The monogrammed silver vanity set sits, as it has for decades, on the dressing table in Miller’s Cabin. There aren’t many resorts that would leave such a family heirloom lying around, but then again, there aren’t many resorts like The Lodge at Glendorn.

I want to make a comfortable environment, not change the way people live,” architect Edward Grenzbach told John Loring when he was interviewed for a 1977 article in Architectural Digest on the house he had just designed for Alfred Hunt.

When Paul O’Neill was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 2001, he planned to secure a pied-​á-​terre in Washington, retain his main residence in Pittsburgh and, with his wife, Nancy, vacation at their Maryland beach house. But finding an acceptable home in the capital proved to be somewhat difficult.

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